September 19, 2005 Meeting Notes for BIP #7: Customer Service

Minutes: Judy Tuttle wanted to clarify and correct the quote from the August 22nd meetings minutes. We do know there is value in customer service, we were discussing how we are going to measure it. Do we want “results” or “indicators”? No other changes necessary

Presentation: Date is set for October 6, 2005 for BIP Team #7. Michael Mills, Bonnie Morris and Carol Stahlke will complete the report for council and have it turned into the Mayors office by 9-23-05.

Survey Review: Sub-committee group was created to review surveys. Debra Humphreys, Carol Stahlke, Art Alexander, Bonnie Morris, Shawn Rogers, John Dutt and Michael Dehner. Carol passed out a copy of the survey results as of Friday September 15th.

Discussion: A concern right away or what jumps right out is the contrast of phone and email. Majority of the Bureaus main form of customer contact is the phone. Surprising, some thought there would be more email.

There was no consistent “Customer service” theme throughout the City. Some have it in their mission statement but majority don’t. Nothing consistent.

An example was the Mayor’s office response, commenting that there is no mention of “customer service” in the mission statement or customer service in goals and standards. However, the Mayor’s office has a position dedicated to just citizens’ requests and responses, which is customer service.

On the survey it was said there was no room for our responses and was not exactly user friendly.

Report Format: Group agreed report needs more in depth analysis for complete results of everyone who responded. Our group will be looking for common themes and trends. Sub-committee will complete the review of the surveys; we will be able to make recommendations from these results.

BIP Team #5: It was decided that our two BIP Teams should have contact. Team #5 is working with HR on the performance development and recruitment within the city and outside City in recruitment efforts, including Supervisor training and utilizing the evaluation process as an advancement tool.

Team #5 has started an RFP process for consultants for a comprehensive curriculum. Art will send a note asking for us to join and collaborate on the KSA’s, customer service and recruitments. It was mentioned how sometimes it is difficult to get “customer service” onto a job description because it is not in the job specification. It was agreed to send a recommendation this week to BIP Team #5 on including a customer service element in job specifications which will allow this to be a criterion for recruitment and subsequent evaluation. (done)

Gordon brought up an example, if a customer believes there is bad customer service because of a specific ordinance or code. They are governed by regulation. Example: A Parking Deputy’s behavior could be adversarial customer service. Has been allowed to do this for years? Do they do performance evaluations? Our recommendation will be to add appropriate language.

Budget: We wont know what costs will be incurred until we start making our recommendations. For a Citywide focus on customer service, some changes will take money like web-based systems. Yet some changes can be done with limited resources like changing mission statements on existing web pages. Example: Creating a comment card, the cost can be absorbed by the Bureau.

Recommendations: Judy Tuttle brought up the point that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel we can start a formal review of best practices from other sources and documents. Example: The State of Oregon “Measuring Customer Satisfaction”. Our issues are not new issues; they are natural occurrences in state agencies.

It was agreed that we would start a sub-committee to review these documents. Michael Mills, Judy Tuttle and John Dutt will set up a time to meet to begin this process. Everyone will read through the State of Oregon document and forward any ideas or recommendations to this sub-committee.

Governance: John Dutt explained his governance letter offering options of what this committee will be recommending. Team decided the governance letter should be incorporated into final recommendations since there are recommendations in it.

It was suggested we offer the governance as part of our recommendations. Create an inventory of the City/Bureau’s various customer service tools.

Bonnie suggested we start a parking lot of ideas for recommendations at our next meeting. To start a master list, review regulations, checking for these areas that have not been thought out but implemented.

Next Steps:

Co-Leads will meet to finalize report to Council

Sub-committee will meet to review State of Oregon document: Judy Tuttle, John Dutt and Michael Mills

Sub-committee will split survey questions and meet to compile data and create report of results for the next BIP meeting.